Creative Artists: Thomas Dewing

 
The turn of the 20th century was a vibrant and changing time for art. There was the full acceptance of Impressionism, the dominating realists and portrait work of Sargent and other like artists, and the birthing of modern art. It was my naive conclusion that all of the highly "creative" painting that would be done at this time would be from the artists blazing the way toward modernism, but through more study, I have found several that were both creative and yet still distinguished representational artists. I did find one artist in particular that jumped right out at me, he was both beyond his time, and still grounded in realism.

Thomas Dewing (1851- 1938) was an American artist born near Boston, trained in Paris at the Académie Julian, and eventually settled in New York City. Dewing is classified as a Tonalist (the most famous Tonalsits being George Inness, James McNeill Whistler, and John H. Twatchtman), and is one of the first painters to apply this predominantly landscape painting approach of tonalism to figure painting. This use of a tonal color palette, his foundation of classical realism and the addition of more impressionistic brush work created extremely unique and mood filled paintings.

In addition to this fairly new style, Dewing also had a unique compositional style that set female figures in full-body poses with plenty of open air, almost like a present day graphic designers use of white space. This slight twist on composition really made me gravitate to these paintings.

There are some designers today that use white space to add breathing room and simplification, while keeping the elements and layout in perfect balance, and then there are bad designers that when given the same elements will produce a barren, unpleasing design because they have poorly placed those elements. I think Dewing must have been a great designer, making him a well rounded artist that combined color harmony, technique, and highly developed skill to create masterful paintings that were unique for their time, and even today.

 

Creative Artists: Geoffrey Johnson

In an attempt to be more creative with my painting, I am doing a fair amount of research and web browsing to discover something that will spark new ideas and concepts. Over the next few months I will be exploring and experimenting with new concepts as well as keep up my normal painting schedule. I will post the things I find interesting along the way.

When first stumbling on this concept of creative representationalism, one artist in particular came immediately to mind. Geoffrey Johnson, born in 1965, is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy, the first and oldest art school in the US, and has been selling out his shows for years now.

Born in North Carolina and now I believe living in Georgia, Geoffery has an extremely compelling style that fuses still urban landscapes with the movement of figures and crowds. He began his career by painting landscapes much like the one below and eventually began incorporating figures which were soon coupled with monochromatic urban scenes, creating a style and concept that is all his own. Geoffrey's work does border the fine line between aesthetic and representational art, but I doubt there is a collector or gallery that wouldn't love to have one of his works in their collection.

Check out more of Geoffrey's work through his galleries: Principal Gallery,  Shain Gallery, & Hubert Gallery


More thoughts on creative art:
I believe the art community, and myself, should limit ourselves to a strict criteria when it comes to creativity. It's easy to see that modern art has opened the doors to just about any material and technique. While this might make it easy to develop something unique, it might not be creative. Anyone can strap some neon lights and paint on a canvas, or drip paint from a pendulum suspended over a canvas, but that doesn't say anything about our past as painters,  our skill and technique, or the exact feeling and message that we are trying to convey (unless it's chaos). If we limit ourselves to classical techniques and materials, we can insure that our work will stand upon the shoulders of the old masters, as well as the test of time.

Brad Kunkle's work (as described in the post below) uses gold leaf, a technique that was used in the Egyptian pyramids and ancient Rome. The use of gold and oil paint together has been used for centuries, and Brad isn't the only contemporary artist doing it, but he was able to add his own creativity and a high level of skill to create something entirely new.

Graphic designers and agencies do this every day, and in some cases the best advertisements take a unique spin on something common or classical (I saw the below Billboard for McDonalds in my town the other day . . . It's a good example). Imagine if the marketing world took hold of the concepts of modern art, we would probably see car salesmen trying to sell cosmetics by screaming at women and slapping colorful starbursts all over. But yet we see in every makeup ad the idea of "natural" beauty and clean, soft light, as if every model is a Greek goddess (and you too is you buy the stuff).

This narrowing down of materials and techniques (which is still very broad) will produce a potential for higher creativity than would otherwise be possible, and could also gauge what is "acceptable" representational creative art. From an investment point of view, collectors are concerned with the whole gamut of art history and how an artists work fits into it. We have all seen artists fade in and out of popularity, catching the latest trend or it's resurgence. If an artists work could be in sync with the foundations of classical art, while still bringing the current world and his personal thoughts into it, then he has a much better shot of becoming a "new master".

As in my past post, I don't think a painting needs to be more than paint on canvas or board, the use of other materials like gold, silver or who knows what else may be a rough road to travel. As we have seen by Geoffrey Johnson and countless other artists, creativity and sound technique is all you need to create something worth while.

Where is the Creative Art?

 Gustave Klimt

A couple weeks back, I saw posted on Facebook that it was Gustav Klimt's birthday (July 14, 1862) and it immediately made me think of the countless times that I have recently heard the comparison of contemporary artist Brad Kunkle's work to Klimts. Being very familiar with Kunkles work, I decided to learn more about Klimt to make a comparison for myself.

  Brad Reuben Kunkle

Both artists use gold leaf and oil paint together on canvas, and both focus primarily on the female figure/portrait (which is probably the most common and popular subject matter). So, past this use of gold, I really didn't see much unique similarities that would justify the hype.

The more I looked through the various paintings, the more one major thought came rushing to my mind. Whether you like their works, or think they are similar, I think the greatest point is that they both are doing more than just painting reality, they have gone a step further and added creativity. Design, simplicity, materials, composition, abstraction . . . these are all elements within their work, and also considerations and judgments that they planned for well before starting to paint.

 Gustave Klimt

I am a firm believer that a painting (or "art") needs to be nothing more than a glimpse of the beauty in our world. Whether an exact representation of the subject or the artists judgment on what elements are specifically important. Both of these general approaches encompass the majority of paintings in the "non-modern" art world and I'm happy to spend hours looking and creating them. But I now see that although the majority of these types of artistic works are filled with great brushwork and exquisite renderings, they may lack the creativity or maybe even better said, the potential for creativity that limits them from being ageless masterpieces.

   Brad Reuben Kunkle

This creative touch that is so apparent in Kunkle's work (and so non-existent in most of today's popular representational masters) has really got me thinking, and a bit convicted, that I could go further with my art and pay more attention on the design and concept of a piece. I bet that if artists took the time to be more creative, we would see greater individuality and perhaps a monumental new era that could stand up to the 19th century masters or in some respects the Modern Art age that predominated the 20th century and today.

 Gustave Klimt

The shift to be more creative in the late 19th century (that Klimt was clearly a part of) was taken to the extreme and spawned Modern art. Losing almost all technique and natural beauty, modern art became only creativity and the striving need for something unique and shocking. Maybe this time around, with the right combination of technique and creativity, and maybe with the help of artist like Brad Kunkle, we can actually get it right.

 Gustave Klimt

  Brad Reuben Kunkle

Note: In the late 19th century, Klimt was highly rejected for his paintings. The main cause of this was for his erotic and overtly nude pieces. I am personally discouraged by this strange association with nudity and sexuality to highly creative art. I feel that these additions pushed art toward the shocking and obscene that modernism was hungry for. This ever growing rise of nudity in both modern, and in some cases, classical art is desensitizing our culture and instead of conveying a new and undiscovered beauty, it is stripping beauty away from intimacy and personal relationships and slapping it onto canvases to be shared with the world. This is strictly my own opinion, but for fear of adding to the noise and problem, I err on the side of caution and stay away from it in my subject matter.